Tag Archives: Oyster

The oysters came up in the dredge like I hadn’t seen them in 50 years (and rarely even back then): huge and clumped together and bedecked with sponges and all manner of marine organisms, including younger oysters, thriving in the niches of the natural reef we’d just busted into. It was last winter, and we’d been dragging the bottom of Virginia’s lower York River for a state crab survey. By chance we’d nicked into an oyster sanctuary, undisturbed for decades. It wasn’t the kind of official sanctuary over which Maryland’s oystermen are wrangling with scientists and environmentalists — the watermen wanting more harvest, others wanting the benefits to the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality and the habitat of an undisturbed oyster reef. The little reef we struck in Virginia, not even designated on charts or given special status in law, is nonetheless well protected. Its enduring and pristine status comes from one of the world’s largest military-industrial complexes, concentrated here in the lower Chesapeake. Read the story here 14:16

Oyster season may be done for now, but the debate rages on in Maryland over the future management of the Chesapeake Bay’s iconic shellfish. Watermen and seafood industry representatives packed a legislative hearing room in Annapolis on Tuesday seeking to head off legislation that would require a study to determine sustainable harvest rates for oysters. Accusations of political chicanery, bias and deception flew during a four-hour hearing before the House Environment and Transportation Committee, leaving some lawmakers baffled. Read the rest here 18:21

The water is 54 degrees, cold enough that Craig Suro lets out a yelp when he dives in. Stinging sea nettles the size of Ping-Pong balls dot the surface around him. To make matters worse, Suro needs to go to the bathroom. “Can you piss in a wetsuit?” he asks. We’re floating a few hundred yards off Tangier Island, a speck of land in the Chesapeake Bay. Beneath us is some of the bay’s finest oyster-growing territory. Its waters are salty but not too salty, a moderate 17 parts per thousand. Enough algae is borne on the currents for millions of oysters to gorge themselves happily. Suro and his partners have bet half a million dollars on being able to turn this patch of bay into an oyster-farming empire. Read the rest here 10:28

An outbreak of Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome is cutting a swathe through the Tasmanian oyster industry. Third generation oyster farmer Ben Cameron discovered he’d lost $1.5million worth of baby oysters in a day. Richard Whittington, Vet scientist, Sydnney UNI This is the worst disease that we’ve actually seen in Australia in terms of its capacity to kill animals en masse within days and put people out of business within days. Video, Read the rest here 08:58

Last spring and summer, crabs were in short supply, and combined with other factors, prices for them peaked at more than $300 a bushel. Crabs are a summer delicacy in Delaware, but last year’s prices meant many restaurants and consumers had to cut back – and in some cases do without. But there is good news growing in the sands of the Delaware and other nearby waterways: The crabs are coming back. Delaware’s projected forecast for the 2016 blue crab harvest is just over 4 million pounds, up 1 million pounds from last year’s projection. That should be good news both for the state’s commercial fishers and for consumers. Read the article here 12:42

Oyster season won’t be reopening any time soon in Mississippi. The CMR was told the required red tide testing to make sure oysters are safe for harvest, could take up to three months. “We’ve never had one at this level or this intensity. This is a historic event,” the DMR’s Joe Jewell said at this morning’s special meeting of the CMR. Jewell was talking about the red tide event which closed oyster season nearly two weeks ago. Read the article here 12:41

RALEIGH, N.C. — You can’t roast oysters without one piece of essential equipment: a pint of beer. That’s the first lesson I learned from award-winning cookbook authors Matt and Ted Lee, who let me persuade them to show me how to throw an oyster roast. Oyster roasts are a culinary tradition in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where the Lee brothers grew up. The Lees were in town on a recent swing through North Carolina promoting their latest cookbook, “The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen.” continued

“Last year at this time, we had about 250 bushels [caught], primarily around St. George’s Island in the lower river,” said Kirby Carpenter, executive secretary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission in Colonial Beach. This year, there’s been a tenfold increase to around 2,500 bushels.Read more here

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

Each year, the New Bedford-based Offshore Mariners’ Wives Association presents perhaps New England’s most prestigious award honoring those who have contributed to the fishing industry across Read More »

Gov. Deval Patrick has been urged by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to request that President Obama “ask” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to institute lesser Read More »